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"[Gaga Stigmata has] very modern, edgy photography to free flowing, urban narratives without censure to analytical essays, et cetera—like Gaga, imagination without ... limits. And the beauty is that anyone can submit work to the site, so artists and writers from all over the [world] have joined this experiment." -The Declaration.org

"Since March 2010, [Gaga Stigmata] has churned out the most intense ongoing critical conversation on [Lady Gaga]."-Yale's The American Scholar

I
wasn’t planning on it, but I guess I’m giving up Lady Gaga for Lent.

Just
a few weeks ago, on Ash Wednesday, the day Christians begin the season of Lent
by having ashes smeared on their foreheads and hearing the words, “from dust
you have come, to dust you shall return,” Lady Gaga announced that the Born
This Way Ball had crumbled to dust. It wasn’t postponed; it wasn’t rescheduled.
It was done. Gone. No more.

And
why? Because a bit of flesh in Gaga’s right hip had come undone. Flesh does
that. It comes undone. It gathers itself into the most beautiful forms, the
most magnificent spectacles – of power, bodies, movement, pleasure, glory. But
no matter how splendid or glorious, flesh always comes undone. Always. It
always returns to the dust of which it is made.

We
might be tempted to forget that Lady Gaga is made of flesh. “Lady Gaga” is,
after all, a much more encompassing phenomenon than a particular 26-year-old fleshy
body. Lady Gaga is the name of an event, a million-faced monster that shows
itself in a seemingly infinite explosion of digital images and videos, aural
landscapes, tweets, tumblrs, and a thousand other named and unnamed forms. Gaga
has seeped her way into every crevice of that mysterious, eternity-like realm
called the Internet. She lives there, breathes there, gives herself there. Her
fans meet her there, touch her there, love her there. But the Internet is not
flesh, exactly. Certainly it lives and pulses with energy. It also breaks down and
comes undone. But it is not made of the tender and vulnerable stuff that gives
us so much pleasure and pain.

To
be sure, Gaga’s art challenges any easy dichotomy between what we might think of
as a fleshy body and the multiple ways such a body is represented and extended into
images, videos, sounds, costumes, and characters. Those extensions, for Gaga, those
multiple worlds that she creates and inhabits and that are created around her, just
are her self, her body. She was born this way. But what does it mean that all
of those worlds can be shaken to their core when a small bit of tissue in her right
hip tears ever so slightly? Is the massive universe and spectacle that is Lady
Gaga really dependent on something so precarious, something so obviously fleshy?
Are our lives really so fragile? Can it all come to end so quickly?

What
if Lady Gaga were never to walk again, or dance again, or get on stage again and
throw her body around wildly and passionately? What would that mean? Just how
much is dependent on her being able-bodied? Would we still love her with such
extreme devotion if she became permanently disabled? How would we love her? How
would she love us? Would her extraordinary ability to create and inhabit digital
worlds be enough? Or do we need her body, her flesh, her ligaments and tendons
and hip sockets?

So
yes, I’m giving up Lady Gaga for Lent. But not because I’m pious. I wouldn’t
have chosen this had it not been forced on me. Against my will, I have to live with
a desire that will go unfulfilled – the desire to see her flesh, to follow the
movements of her body with my own eyes, to hear her scream and sing and preach
with my own ears, to breathe the air of a shared space, to experience the energy
and love of a shared moment. And I mourn that loss.

I’ve
seen her in the flesh before. At the Monster Ball two years ago. It was then
that I really saw and encountered her for the first time. My love for Gaga was
birthed in the flesh, in the deeply bodily and erotic experience of seeing her
live. There are those who love Gaga but have never seen her live. I’m not sure
I would love her if I hadn’t been around her flesh. Or at least my love would
be very different. Probably less visceral. Less obsessive. Less personally
transformative. Seeing Gaga’s flesh made such an impact on me that I had to
transform my own flesh in response. The Halloween following the Monster Ball, I
dressed up in Lady Gaga drag. It wasn’t just a costume. Her flesh had touched
my flesh in such a way that my flesh had in someway become her flesh. I am Lady
Gaga. Lady Gaga is me.

I
purchased tickets for the Born This Way Ball that was supposed to take place in
Nasvhille on March 10. I probably paid too much for them. I was late to work on
the day I bought the tickets because I was hovering over my computer to buy them
the instant they went on sale. I canceled a church service I lead on Sunday
evenings so I could get my religion that evening from Gaga instead. But now March
10 sits on my calendar like any other date. Regular, nothing special, no longer
a holy-day as it had been for several months.

This
is, I suppose, what Lent is supposed to be about – letting those things die
that we cherish and cling to most passionately, even and especially those
things that give us our deepest sense of identity. It is a time to remember that
nothing survives, that our lives are vapor, here today, gone tomorrow. The idea,
however, is not to induce shame or despair about our lives or our passions. To
remember that you and I and all the world are dust, are nothing, is precisely the
way into passion, into life. The promise of Lent is that when you give up
everything, every attempt to secure your life, it will all be returned to you –
just not as a possession, but rather as a gift, one you can neither anticipate nor
control. To live life in openness to the world as gift is to exist precariously,
but also passionately, on the edge of glory.

So
I have to give up Lady Gaga. I have to let the Born This Way Ball return to
dust. But this is not because I no longer love her and desire her flesh. I do.
But I have to let it be flesh. Is this not the lesson Gaga has been teaching us
all along? That identity is not stable but exists in a continual moment of
birth, death, and re-birth? That pain, loss, tears, and blood are the stuff of
life? Perhaps from the beginning she has been teaching us to die – so that we
might be reborn. Now we have to let her do it.

None
of this is to lessen the sorrow of Gaga’s tour being canceled. For me, that
sorrow is very real. More so because I hadn’t planned on experiencing the Born
This Way Ball alone. Part of what I love about Lady Gaga is the way she has
connected me to other people. One of those people is Zoë, the nine-year-old
daughter of my best friend. We were planning on attending the Born This Way
Ball together. Zoë and I share a passionate love of Lady Gaga. We have matching
Lady Gaga lunch boxes. We have frequent conversations about our favorite Lady
Gaga songs and what we would say to her if we ever got to meet her – Zoë says she would say, “You are so punk!!”
She adored seeing me in Gaga drag. I am Zoë’s guitar teacher, and without fail
every lesson ends with an extended wandering around YouTube looking for the
latest Lady Gaga videos. Zoë says sometimes that the thing she wants most in
life is to meet Lady Gaga. When I texted my friend and told him that the tour
had been cancelled, his first response was, “Zoë is going to be pissed!” He
tells me that when he gave her the news, she collapsed into a heap on the floor
and just wept.

My
heart is broken for Zoë. I wanted so much for her to see Lady Gaga live. I
wanted so much to see Lady Gaga live with her. But that won’t happen, at least
for now. I couldn’t just let our shared sadness go unaddressed, I felt like I
needed to do something to step into the void left by Gaga’s absence. So I drew
a picture for her. I gave it to her when I went to watch her last basketball of
the season, a game her team lost, which also caused her a great deal of
distress. When I gave it to her, I said, “Zoë, this is a gift for you. I drew
it because I know both you and I are sad about not being able to see Lady Gaga.
I hope we’ll get to see her together someday.” I know that my drawing won’t
make up for the disappointment over the canceled tour, or even the lost
basketball game. But it is a gift of my flesh to hers. I hope she holds on to
it. I hope somehow it becomes a reminder to her that it is ok to be made of
flesh.

Author Bio:Peter Kline is a PhD student in Theology and Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. His chapter in the forthcoming Gaga Stigmata book is titled, "Jesus in Drag: A Prayer."

2 comments:

Beautiful! I really connect to what you said about gaga teaching us to die in order to be able to rise from the ashes stronger. No matter what happens with gaga, she will always be able to teach us something about life

Established in March 2010 as the first mover in Gaga studies,Gaga Stigmata: Critical Writings and Art About Lady Gaga is a technological journal that critically-creatively participates in the cultural project of shock pop phenomenon Lady Gaga. Keeping with the spirit of our zeitgeist, Gaga Stigmata moves at the speed of pop.

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Editors

Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer, artist, and founding editor of Gaga Stigmata. She is the author of the books The Ravenous Audience, E! Entertainment, Kim's Fairytale Wedding, and, with Amaranth Borsuk, ABRA.Visit her website.

Meghan Vicks holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.

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